


that’s amore, squirt

by floweryfran



Category: Iron Man (Comics), Iron Man (Movies), Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies), Spider-Man - All Media Types, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Fluff, Hurt Peter Parker, Iron Dad, Irondad, Parent Tony Stark, Peter Parker Needs a Hug, Peter Parker Whump, Peter Parker is a Little Shit, Post-Iron Man 3, Precious Peter Parker, Protective Peter Parker, Protective Tony Stark, Spider-son, Tony Stark Acting as Peter Parker's Parental Figure, Tony Stark Feels, Tony Stark Has A Heart, Tony Stark Needs a Hug, Tony Stark-centric, honestly it’s closer to straight up fluff than whump and comfort but he’s a little sick so ??, irondad and spider-son, spiderson, whump and comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-12
Updated: 2020-01-12
Packaged: 2021-02-27 12:15:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,834
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22227001
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/floweryfran/pseuds/floweryfran
Summary: or; five times tony proves he’s capable as a father and one time peter proves he’s a good kid, thank you very much———He always wants the place to look good when the kid is over. The Compound is big and white and echoing and lonely with just him and Pepper living here full time, Natasha visiting when she isn’t babysitting the illegal Captains America and checking in on Frozone, and Rhodey only here when he’s not prepping himself to be the next goddamn president of the United States. He likes it when the kid stays, he looks forward to it, and wants him to see it as a place to be comfortable, at the very least. He sleeps there two nights a week, anyway—more if he’s been stabbed or tased or something else stupid as shit and needs to be observed overnight in the medbay. It ought to be some semblance of a home.
Relationships: Peter Parker & Tony Stark
Comments: 128
Kudos: 867
Collections: Peter Parker Stories, god tier spider-man fics





	that’s amore, squirt

**Author's Note:**

> this is soppy sappiness and that is all. from my kitchen to urs
> 
> SORRY EDITING INTERMITTENTLY idk if you get notifications from it but sorry if you do ignore me

I.

Tony runs his knuckles over his chin. He’s struggling to force the two particular compounds he’s fiddling with to combine without emitting a greenish, noxious gas. He’s been mixing all night, having FRIDAY run countless sims, but a solution stubbornly evades him. 

He huffs a sigh as FRIDAY says, quietly, “ _Sorry, boss. Another failed attempt. Might I suggest a break? You’ve been going for seventeen hours and Mister Parker is due to arrive with Mister Hogan in just over sixty minutes.”_

“Shit,” Tony says. 

He’s lost track of time again. This is why he needs Pepper: to remind him to do things. Like eating. And sleeping. And drinking water. And blinking, occasionally. 

He looks down at the gloves on his hands. They’re wet with chemicals and frayed along the seams, too loose at the wrists, just slightly too long in the fingers. He pulls them off carefully, tossing them into the _contaminated with hazardous waste_ laundry bucket. 

“Should I… what should I do to get ready for him?” Tony says. He’s half thinking aloud, half asking FRIDAY, because he’s so goddamn clueless as to how to watch the kid that he frequently resorts to asking his sentient robot for advice. 

_“I would advise you wash up, first,”_ she says dryly. 

“Don’t sass me,” Tony says, burying his hands in the pockets of his jeans and making his way to the elevator. “I can render you useless by deleting but one strand of code.”

_“Whatever satisfies your whims, boss,”_ she says. Then, _“So long as you shower first. It has been almost forty hours since you last washed and I assume Mister Parker would prefer not having to smell your body odor from the lobby of the building.”_

Tony lets a hand fall against his chest. “I… wow. I’m strangely proud that your mental faculties have evolved to allow you to roast me like this, but at the same time, et tu, Brute?”

_“Colonel Rhodes says I should do my best to keep your ego in check during his absence.”_

“Hm,” Tony says. “Sounds like him.” Tony drops into an overly deep impression of Rhodey’s smooth voice. “ _I’m off to Oslo to meet with the Prime Minister of Norway about the punitive system, but don’t worry, I left your artificial intelligence in charge.”_

_“That certainly does sound like the Colonel, boss.”_

“Hm. What a treasure he is,” Tony says fondly. 

Tony showers as quickly as he can manage, if only to keep FRIDAY from attempting to play hostess by embarrassing him in front of the kid in his absence. He doesn’t bother shaving—hasn’t had the time or energy recently, and now the damn thing is all grown in, like a normal beard instead of his usual angular, suave one, and damn if that doesn’t give him a moment of imposter syndrome—but makes sure the sweater and jeans he throws on are clean. They smell of Pepper’s favorite detergent, lavender and chamomile, and he wraps his arms around himself for a moment and pretends she’s behind him, caging his waist. 

“FRI, send Pepper a little message telling her she’s the light of my life and I adore her, won’t you?”

_“Sure thing, boss.”_

By the time Tony reaches the living room, FRIDAY announces Pepper has answered his message with _what did you buy. or break. or offend._

“Nothing!” Tony exclaims. “Tell her, in these exact words, just my heart, which is in a million pieces without you.”

_“Miss Potts says you’re a sap and that she’ll be home Tuesday evening. Would you like me to respond?”_

“Send her a bunch of hearts. Like, so many hearts.”

Tony puts his fists onto his hips and looks around the room for a moment. Peter left some comic books and a box of Battleship on the coffee table last weekend when he came by for what has become Workshop Friday, Training Saturday, and Cartoons Sunday. He shakes his head and collects the clutter, plopping it into a wicker basket beside the couch. He then straightens out the decorative pillows and organizes the flannel blankets so they hang neatly over the back of the loveseat, which is perpetually empty. The couch cushions are too stiff; underused. Everything is pristine. Shiny. His breaths echo under the high ceilings.

He feels it like splinters under his fingernails, a marrow-deep ache, a burn at the base of his skull. Empty. 

He claps his hands once and says, aloud, “What the fuck am I doing.”

_“Preparing for Mister Parker’s arrival, boss.”_

“Who asked you? Was it me? Can’t a man have an existential crisis in peace around here?”

FRIDAY stays silent. 

“Lotta nerve, you’ve got,” Tony mumbles. He scratches at his shoulder for a moment, thinking hard, sure he must be missing something: a way to make it all even better. The place—he always wants the place to look good when the kid is over. The Compound is big and white and echoing and lonely with just him and Pepper living here full time, Natasha visiting when she isn’t babysitting the illegal Captains America and checking in on Frozone, and Rhodey only here when he’s not prepping himself to be the next goddamn president of the United States. He likes it when the kid stays, he looks forward to it, and wants him to see it as a place to be comfortable, at the very least. He sleeps there two nights a week, anyway—more if he’s been stabbed or tased or something else stupid as shit and needs to be observed overnight in the medbay. It ought to be some semblance of a home. A nice hotel he visits a lot. A bed and breakfast with excellent cleaning staff, perhaps.

_“Boss,”_ FRIDAY says, and, this time, she sounds more gentle, _“perhaps Mister Parker would appreciate something to eat once he arrives. It is almost five in the afternoon, after all.”_

Tony smacks a hand to his forehead. “Duh. Thanks, FRI.” Then, “What should I, uh, what do the kids eat these days?”

_“Seeing as Mister Parker has never had a qualm with any variety of take out you have ordered for you two, I can only assume based on statistical probability that he will eat anything you give him.”_

“Kid would eat a fuckin’ table if I put ranch on it,” Tony says. “Alright. Hm.” 

Tony looks into the kitchen. He looks down at the floorboards beneath his feet. 

He looks back towards the stove. It’s a nice stove. He used to love cooking for the team, back when they still existed. It was his station: consultant, and chef. He made a lot of scrambled eggs during that phase of his life. 

The shelves hanging from the wall beside the stove are where the goods are, though. He’s got cookbooks up to the gills, all sorts: different cuisines, books dedicated to bread alone, dessert books, vegan ones from when Pepper went on that plant-based kick a few months ago. 

He approaches the shelf and runs his fingers over the spines, skimming. His finger catches on a familiar one of worn leather, title pressed gold against a crimson face. He bites into his bottom lip and pulls it out, flicking through the dusty, tomato splattered pages, striped with his mother’s curling script in furious violet ink. He runs a nail over the words, _due uova_ , _250 milligrammi di farina._ It feels like reading a tongue he had known long ago, like rediscovering a piece of his soul long buried. Excavating. 

He decides he’ll make the homemade pasta. He’s got time, and if he isn’t done by the time the kid arrives, he’s pretty sure the kid would shit himself in excitement to help. He’s cute like that. 

The dough is simple: he weighs out the flour, dumps it on the countertop, forms it into a vague volcano, and mixes in the eggs, water, and oil. He kneads until his elbows are sore and then sets it to rest in a bowl, covered in a frayed, striped towel the way his mamma used to every Sunday afternoon. 

He chops garlic, tomatoes, basil, throws them in a pan, cooks them down until a thick sauce starts to come together. When it’s time, he rolls out the dough. He hasn’t got a heavy rolling pin and doesn’t feel like using the pasta sheeter, so he decides a bottle of red wine is a pretty decent improvisational tool. He slices thin strips, flours them, lets them rest. He then digs through the cabinets with a sort of unfamiliar focus in search of the immersion blender. He can’t find it under the island where the stand mixer is, or above the oven with the cookie sheets and tupperware. He’s half inside the lazy susan, undoing the careful balance of the mandolin atop some ceramic mixing bowls, when he is asked, “Whatcha lookin’ for, Mister Stark?”

He jumps, bumping his head sharply against the inside of the cabinet. “Ow,” he says, turning towards Peter, squinting in pain. “Hey, buddy. Happy bring you in?”

Peter is rocking on the soles of his sock-covered feet, looking down at Tony from an angle that makes his hair flop into his eyes. “Yup. Sorry for scaring you. I figured you’d heard me coming.”

Tony pushes himself to his feet with a huff and chucks Peter over the shoulder as a proper greeting. “All good, squirt. Food’s almost done, by the way.”

Peter’s eyebrows shoot up, the funky left one making a strange arc against his wrinkled forehead. “You cooked?” He scratches his nose. “You cook? You’ve done that? You’re capable of that? Because Pepper has told me about your omelet fiasco.”

Tony sniffs, digging through a thick layer of fondness for where he’s sure he must be a little bit affronted. He finds nothing. “Omelets are very difficult to complete properly, for your information. Pasta, on the other hand? _Semplice._ Homemade, start to finish—” Tony gestures to the spots of flour on his sweater, “—dough and sauce. Well. Chunky tomato sauce-like-thing. Sautéed tomatoes. With lots of basil and garlic. I couldn’t find the blender.”

Peter has a lot of grins. This one mostly encompasses the right corner of his lip and the corresponding half of his face, right eye half closed and nostril wrinkled. “Okay, Mister Stark.”

Tony scowls and shoos Peter out of the way. “No sass in my kitchen.”

“I didn’t even say anything!”

“You thought it so loud that I heard it. That’s a very strange talent you have: loud thinking. Loudest thinker I ever met, including Aunt Focaccia.”

“I’m telling May you call her that.” 

“She knows,” Tony says, stirring the tomato goop pan. “Want to fill a pot with water for me? Or are you still going to be a pain in my ass?”

“Somewhere between the two,” Peter says, climbing onto the counter to grab the pasta pot from the cabinet above the microwave. 

“Don’t fall,” Tony says. He tries to ignore the stutter in his chest. He’s seen Peter get cut through by a bullet with his own two eyes. The kid falling off a stool is nothing compared to that. And yet. 

“Have a little faith in me,” Peter says, handing the pot over. Tony takes it in one hand and keeps the other extended for Peter to grab, helping him lower himself back to the floor without tumbling. “Thanks,” he says begrudgingly once his socks are steady on the tile. 

“Mhm,” Tony says. Peter swipes the pot and fills it with water. Tony points him to the salt and Peter tosses a handful in, like a good little Italian boy. 

“ _Come il mare,”_ Peter says. 

“ _Bravo,”_ Tony says, cheesed. Tony hadn't meant for it to happen, but the two of them have become pretty reliant upon tossing Italian phrases or requests at each other from opposite sides of the lab table. The kid hadn’t been fluent when they started, but he catches on fast, and he’s been exposed to the language for so long from May. Even if May speaks Siciliana. Which isn’t fuckin’ Italian. Although, by that grain, Tony’s Napoletano really isn’t Italian either. 

Whatever. Kid is cultured, is all. 

Once the water boils, Tony tells the kid to drop the pasta in. He does, literally, and a quarter of the water splashes over the rim of the pot. 

Surely they would both deny any sort of shrill scream they let out in their moment of fear. 

“ _Stunad,”_ Tony mutters, prodding the kid in the ribs. 

Peter scratches his brow with his middle finger, but mops up the spill nonetheless. 

Tony handles the draining of the pasta to minimize further burnage. He plates it all up the best he can, twirling the spaghetti like they do in restaurants and piling on some shredded pecorino romano. He grabs a fork, then, and slides that and the plate along the length of the countertop towards the stool the kid had parked himself on. 

Peter stares at the plate, his face screwed up in an apostrophe. 

“Mister Stark… is this gonna be good? I’m too used to May unintentionally poisoning me to just, like, accept this at face value.”

Tony rolls his eyes. “Pete, come on. I’m not trying to poison you. Have I ever once poisoned you?” He raises his eyebrows expectantly. “I’ll answer that: _no._ No, I have not poisoned you ever, not even a little, in all the time I’ve known you. _Mangialo_.”

Peter lifts the fork to his mouth as slowly as humanly possible, before inching an immeasurably minuscule bite into his mouth. 

His jaw falls slack. “Mister Stark. Holy shit.”

“Mouth.”

“This is… this is… _edible._ Dare I say, I even—“ Peter’s eyes widen and he whispers as if it is a dark secret, “ _I like it.”_

It is Tony’s turn to be pleased. “Oh. Oh! Cool. I mean,” he scratches his chin, “I knew it was gonna be good but you made me nervous, the way you were acting, you’re an absolute drama queen, like, Audrey Hepburn could never—“

“Mister Stark, when did you learn to _cook?”_

Tony, eyebrows still raised in surprise, gives a half-smile. “From my mom. Italian woman, old Italian recipes. None of this Americanized Italian food, either. Real, traditional stuff. Like this? This is a feast for a poor Napoletano. Simple, fresh shit. Goat milk cheese. Delicious, though.”

Peter gapes. “Please, oh, please teach me to cook. Please, Mister Stark, I am begging you—“

Tony needs to get this flutter in his chest checked out. A heart murmur, maybe? “Sure, kid—“

Peter begins to tick off on his fingers as he speaks. “I will wipe the lab equipment and do all my homework and come home on time from patrol and stop eating peanut butter from the jar with a spoon—“

“Wait, that’s _you?_ I hollered at Natasha for that last week.“

“And wash all your cars—“

“Pete, I said _yes!”_

“And do the laun—wait, you said yes?” A smile like peachy dawn spreads across Peter’s face. “Oh. Okay, cool. I’m absolutely not going to do any of those chores, then.”

Tony shakes his head exasperatedly. “I didn’t think you would for a minute.”

“No more May cuisine! This should be a national holiday,” Peter says. 

Tony rolls his eyes and dishes himself a plate. “If you wash the dishes I’ll let you take home the leftovers.”

“Mister Stark, have I ever told you how wonderful you are? Because you are incredible, a great man, the best, possibly—“

“Alright, kid, alright.”

II.

Peter likes to think he manages to sleep a perfectly normal amount every week. 

Tony begs to disagree. 

Knowing the kid in his awakened state had led Tony to completely incorrectly assume his sleep schedule. He always seems so angelic, with those damn huge eyes and his stupid, radiant smile. He’s a complete stubborn jerk and a pain in the ass, sure, but he’s such a good kid that he makes up for it. 

When he’s asleep, he’s far from angelic. 

Even when he isn’t dreaming, which is far fewer nights than when he is, he sleeps with his face mashed into the pillow, his mouth half-open with a veritable waterfall of drool slipping out of the corner, his limbs tossed haphazardly in starfish position, more often than not with an arm folded under his head or the sheets cocooning him like a straightjacket or a foot straight in the air. He talks in his sleep—sometimes _laughs,_ which is fucking terrifying. 

He also tends to sleepwalk. 

It isn’t every night. It’s only happened once or twice while he’s stayed at the Compound. But damn if it isn’t an event every time it happens. 

Tony’s sitting on the couch in the communal living room, wallowing, when Peter waltzes his merry way in. The burner phone Tony was tossing palm to palm slips from his grasp and tumbles onto the carpet. 

“Uh, hey, Mister, you should not be awake at this blasphemous hour,” Tony says. 

Peter continues to stand in the shadow of the doorway like Slenderman, silent and shrouded. 

“Jesus, Pete, you okay?” Tony says, rising to his feet with a huff. His knees crack. He stares at them in offense. 

Peter still doesn’t answer. 

“Bad dream?” Tony asks, a little quieter then. 

Nothing. 

Tony goes forward until Peter is no longer wraithlike, approaching with his quietest footsteps as if trying to keep from breaking some unspoken, delicate peace that comes under the three o’clock moon. 

“Oh,” Tony says. 

Peter’s eyes are open but glazed, unfocused. They shine in the low light from the lamp Tony was using. His shoulders are rounded, the sweatshirt he must have stolen from Tony’s stash hanging loose past his hands. He’s wearing a pair of yoga leggings Tony knows he refuses to wear in the public eye, and his socks are mismatched and slouched. 

“You come looking for me, buddy?” Tony says. 

Peter doesn’t answer. 

Tony extends a hand and reaches for Peter’s. So far, Peter has been good about following along with Tony’s instructions while sleepwalking. A nudge gets him on the right track. 

“Back to bed, yeah? It’s really late. Time for spider-infants to be asleep.” Tony takes Peter’s hand lightly and tugs. Peter starts to walk. “Let’s go to your room. That’s the best place to sleep. Not the couch, right? That’ll mess up your back. Don’t need that for you, no, sir. You’re too young for a bad back.”

Peter, in his sleep, hums. 

“Yeah, you agree with me. I know, I’m always right. What can I say. I’m a genius.”

Peter doesn’t comment to that. 

“Alright, here we are, bud. Chez Peter, all—woah, the hell’d you do in here?” The blanket is torn off the bed, the pillows strewn around the floor. A stack of books is on the carpet beside the desk, as if Peter knocked them down in a clumsy search for something. His desk chair is upended, his beanbag rolled. The closet doors swing lightly in the lilting breeze from the open window. Silver moonlight guilds it all like a pharaoh’s loot, the ghosts of golden riches brought to the afterlife. 

Peter, who had begun to scramble himself back up into his bed, pauses, then turns, standing. He mumbles something. 

“What was that, kiddo?” Tony comes closer, so he can read Peter’s lips. 

“Mi’sser Stark,” Peter says.

Tony feels a wave of something fierce roll through his chest, all the way up to his scalp and down to his belly. 

“Were you looking for me? Pete?”

“Tony,” Peter says. “Tooony.”

“Right here,” Tony says. “I’m right here—here, Pete. C’mere.” 

Tony puts a hand on the kid’s shoulder and helps him clamber onto the mattress. He then replaces the pillows, shakes out the blanket and lets it fall over the kid. He closes the closet doors. Picks up the books. Sets the chair and the beanbag upright. 

He hesitates a moment before approaching the edge of the bed. Peter has already laid himself out flat, cheek squished against his pillow, hair dangling in front of his eyes. 

Tony tries not to think about it when his hand reaches out and brushes the curl from Peter’s forehead. 

He tries not to forget the way Peter melts fluid into his mattress as he does it, letting out a sigh from the gentle pressure. 

III.

“You want to _what,”_ Peter says. 

“Y’know,” Tony mimes pulling an arm back and then flinging it forward. “Like fetch, but with less running. Catch.”

“Why,” Peter says. 

Tony has no explanation for why he has a canister of fresh, stinky, yellowish tennis balls in his hand, nor for the barely used Nikes on his feet. The spirit moved him, perhaps. One moment he was flicking through the Better Homes and Gardens Pepper had left on the toilet lid and the next he was digging through a closet in the gym that hadn’t been opened since the big split. 

“Aren’t you supposed to take your kids out for at least thirty minutes a day to let them run off their energy and spring a leak?”

Peter stares dryly as Tony struggles to keep a mortified blush from rising in his cheeks. _Your kids_. As in his kids—kid, that is. As in Peter is his kid. Jesus. 

What a thought. 

“Alright, fine, never mind. Yeesh, tough crowd,” Tony says. 

“No, wait,” Peter says. “Let’s, uh. Let’s do it. Let’s have a catch.”

Tony is not relieved, nor is he excited. Not at all. He’s never been less excited in all of his life. 

They don’t have baseball gloves, but Tony doesn’t particularly mind. He likes the slap of the ball on his palm. He likes the early-spring breeze rustling their shirts, promising warmer days, brighter days, longer, languid, stifling days. The grass is damp, and Tony feels almost as if he’s ready to sink into it, to root, to bloom into something new. 

Peter smiles across the stretch of grass. His nose is pinkish with the chill, and his baseball cap throws a shadow over his eyes. 

“The Mets need a pitcher like you, Pete,” Tony calls. The wind swallows some of his volume, voracious, selfish. “They’ll never last this season without your fastball.” 

“You haven’t even seen my splitter yet,” Peter says, cupping a hand around his lips. The ball thuds against his palm.

Tony shakes his head, feeling absurd. Feeling like he’s swallowed a full tube of bubbles and been shaken up. They’re rising in his stomach, they’ll float out of his lips if he opens his mouth. 

He speaks anyway. “I’m—uh, thanks, kid.”

He can see the corner of Peter’s lip quirk from across the grass. “Thanks, too,” he says, more quietly. 

Peter wipes his nose on the sleeve of his windbreaker. Tony thinks, _Thank god he isn’t my kid. Fucking gross._

(But then Peter slips easily under his shoulder as they retreat back into the Compound for warmth, and Tony winds his arm tight around the kid, finding himself thinking down an awfully different path.)

IV.

Tony isn’t an idiot. He can read Peter like a book by now. He knows when the kid is nervous, feels anxiety wagging its ugly head in his own chest when the kid gnaws on the strings of his sweatshirt, or scratches at his wrists, or clenches his jaw and takes those heaved, stuttered breaths. The kid’s joy isn’t always written so obviously, but it bears a wrinkled nose, glittering eyes, bounced steps. Dread and grief, both as if he’s been washed out and faded with a glazed stare that seems to look straight into the horrors of Dante’s inferno, his soul floating on the wind with Paolo and Francesca’s. 

This, however. This Peter, with his head buried in his crossed arms, skin pale to put parchment to shame, but his cheekbones fuschia pink. Waxy. Eyes sharp but watery, red-rimmed, heavy-lidded, but not like he’s been crying, nor like exhaustion is taking him. He hasn’t spoken since plopping down at the lab table with a mumbled, “Hey, Mister Stark.” Not even so much as to request a screwdriver. Tony almost thinks the kid’s possessed. Or asleep, which is a reality almost dependent on the former. 

“Pete,” he says. 

“Mmph,” Peter says, looking up blearily. “Crap, sorry, Mister Stark. My bad.”

Tony stares critically to no further avail. “You good, kiddo?” 

“Yeah,” Peter says quickly. He shifts his hands along the tabletop and nudges a soldering iron, which he picks up as if ready to use, then frowns at and drops, shaking his head. 

“Pete,” Tony says. “ _Pazzo.”_

“Yeah, yeah,” Peter grumbles. He drops his chin into his hand. He sniffles for a moment, then sneezes spectacularly, four times in a row. 

“Ohh,” says Tony. “You’re sick.”

“Nuh uh,” Peter says. 

“So sick. Sickly, sneezy spider.”

“Noooo,” Peter moans, leaning flat across the counter. 

“Alright,” Tony says. “Operation fix spider-baby is now on the table. Soup. I can do soup, that is something I am—capable of. Vegetables and water. Delightful.”

“No, I’m good,” Peter hurries to assure. He mops his dripping nose on his sleeve. 

“Yuck,” Tony announces. “C’mon. Upstairs. To the couch with you, you’re banished.” 

“Banished?” Peter pouts. 

“So banished,” Tony says, crossing around the table to take Peter by the elbow. 

Peter sighs and slides to his feet. He immediately claps a hand to his forehead, lilting, his knees dropping out from under him. 

“Woah woah woah, my Victorian Madame, slow yourself.” 

Peter groans. “Head rush. Sorry, blackout.”

“Take your time,” Tony says quietly. 

Peter leans forward, resting his forehead against the bones of Tony’s chest. One of Tony’s hands comes up to the back of the kid’s head, holds it in place. 

“Okay,” Peter mumbles after a moment. “Good to go.”

“Alright, bud. Slow this time.”

Tony deposits the kid on the couch in the living room, drapes a blanket over his shoulders, and then wraps a second blanket around his legs. 

“Gimme a number on this fever, FRI?” Tony says as he tucks the blanket under Peter’s thighs. Peter is looking at Tony like he's mildly betrayed. 

_“One hundred and two point one, boss.”_

“Hm,” Tony says. “Don’t love that.”

“Mm,” Peter says, blinking slow. 

“Alright,” Tony whispers. “I’m gonna get you some Pedialyte so you stay hydrated, right? Good? Good. And then I’ll throw the soup on and check if we’ve got some pain relievers for you.” Tony can’t help but reach out to push some sweat-dampened curls off Peter’s forehead. “You’ll be okay for five minutes or so?” 

“Oh, man, Tony,” Peter grumbles. “Yes, I’ll survive, somehow, at the will of God himself, perhaps.” 

Tony chucks him under the chin. 

He tries to hurry about, scrambling into the kitchen to turn on the pot, tossing some halved vegetables in to sautée. He flurries, slipping on the hardwood in his socks, to his bathroom to sift for a bottle of Peter’s special pain pills, back to the kitchen with a curse for the forgotten Pedialyte. 

He pours water into the pot to boil with the vegetables. Grabs a mug, a bag of ginger lemon tea, and microwaves a cup, before stacking it all in his hands, along his arms, against his chest, and carrying it in to Peter. 

“Soup’s on, buddy,” he says, trying to drop his load as gently as possible onto the coffee table. 

Peter’s eyes are shut. He hums his response. 

“Medicine and tea,” Tony says, lowering his voice, softening it around the edges, like marshmallow over a fire. Wanting desperately to be soft for his kid. 

Peter cracks one eye open and lifts one hand for the pills. Tony shakes a few out onto his palm and Peter knocks them back dry. 

“I hate that,” Tony says, handing him the Pedialyte. Peter twists the top to crack it open, sipping slow. 

“I hate this,” Peter says, then sips more. 

Tony holds a hand out and takes the bottle back. He closes it carefully, puts it on the coffee table. 

“Tony?” Peter says. 

“Yeah, bub?”

“Can I take a nap?” he says. 

Tony lets a hand fall on Peter’s knee, rubs the spot. “Yeah—yes, of course. Nap to your heart’s content. Want a movie in the background or somethin’?”

“Mm. No. But, uh.”

“ _Uh,_ what, kid?”

Peter’s face goes pinker. “Can you maybe, like, stay, so I don’t have to be all miserable and, and alone while I’m—?”

Tony feels like he’s melting. He’s got to be melting, he’s midday ice cream under the July steady sun, he’s paper under water. “Wouldn’t dream of leaving,” he says, and he plops himself onto the couch at Peter’s side, hip to knee. 

Peter drops his head onto Tony’s shoulder, burrowing there, catlike, cheek squished, breath warm through the cotton of Tony’s shirt. Tony winds his arm over Peter’s narrow shoulders and squeezes him tight. “I’ve gotcha, kiddo,” he whispers. He closes his eyes, lets his fingers flick through the ends of Peter’s hair along his neck. “Not going anywhere.”

V.

“ _Tony_ ,” Peter hisses. “ _Mister Stark. Mister billionaire man, alloy boy, stinky Italian sir.”_

An amused snort slips from Tony as he holds the phone between his cheek and his shoulder, his hands full of screws. “Hey, brat. What’s up? Aren’t you at school?”

“ _Yes, that’s why I’m whispering.”_

Tony leans back on his stool and carefully maneuvers himself so his feet can reach the countertop. For a terrible moment, the stool tilts, losing balance, and his stomach drops. He shifts quickly to right himself. Reassesses his tactic. Leans back more slowly, gets one foot onto the table, and is able to nudge the empty can he plans on storing his screws in closer to himself. He inches his foot down, satisfied, and then pours the screws into the jar in a noisy, silver stream. He rubs his palms on his jeans. “Wait,” he says. “Wait, you’re not, like, in class, are you?”

_“Uh, no!”_ Peter says. “ _No, no way, I’m not calling from class, I’d—never do that.”_

Tony rolls his eyes and asks God why him. “What is it? Forgot an assignment? Faking ill? An anonymous donation to the library because you spilled your coffee on the only color printer again?”

_“Don’t resurrect my traumas like that,”_ Peter says. _“I don’t appreciate it.”_

“I don’t appreciate the suspense of you avoiding the crux of the matter at hand,” Tony says. 

_“Ugh,”_ Peter says. _“It’s just that May has a shift all night tonight and I have this form that needs—whoopsies,”_ there’s a clatter and Peter disappears for a handful of seconds. Tony waits semi-patiently, examining his oil-smudged nails. Peter isn’t much of a sneak. _“Okay I’m back,”_ Peter breathes. _“Almost got caught but didn’t because I’m absolutely a pro. Anyway, I have this form that needs to get signed by a guardian but I’m not gonna see May until tomorrow and I don’t know what to do so I need—your advice, I guess?”_

Tony lets that ruminate. “Well,” he says, “you could always bring it over here. I could—I dunno, forge May’s signature if you’re too pristine to.” Something is fidgeting nervously in Tony’s stomach. Somewhere Pepper is rolling her eyes at him. Rhodey, too. “Or,” he says, as he’s had a bright, sudden idea. “Or, I could, I don’t know, sign it for you.” 

_“But it has to be a parent or guardian,”_ Peter says, sounding confused. 

Tony flicks a bright blue display up and out of the tabletop. He clicks around, squinting, reading, “One moment,” he says to Peter, and begins to hum his own hold music. He can practically hear the kid roll his eyes. “Aha,” he cuts off to proclaim. He clicks a few more arrows, types a command into FRIDAY’s interface, and then closes the display, satisfied. “Well, that problem is fixed.”

_“What?”_ Peter says. _“What did you do. What illegal thing did you just do.”_

“Not that illegal!” Tony scratches his jaw. “Entered myself as a guardian in your school records, is all.”

“ _Is that…? Tony,”_ Peter admonishes, but Tony can hear the barely suppressed grin in his voice. He’s probably blushing the way he does, the type where it spreads hot over his big goofy ears and up across the expanse of his forehead. 

“Peter,” Tony echoes, but he’s grinning a little, too. He flicks the display back on and just looks at it for a second, tries to let the layout sear itself into his mind. Peter’s—really quite horrid—yearbook picture, his grade stats, May’s phone number right there above his. “I’ll tell May,” he acquiesces. “And if she hates me for it, I’ll get rid of it as soon as your form is processed. Deal?”

Peter grumbles something along the lines of _deal_. 

“Now go pay attention, troublemaker,” Tony says. “I’m in Manhattan for work so I’ll pick you up later, okay?”

_“Okayseeyoulaterbye,”_ Peter hisses, and clicks off the line without further ado. 

Tony hums a little to himself, spinning side to side on his stool, gaze locked on the projection before him. 

When he finally does tear himself up and off his ass, he shakes his head. Damn kid. 

He pulls on a knitted hat and a pair of more average, roundish sunglasses rather than his usual tinted ones. Pairs it all with a corduroy jacket he’s fairly certain belonged to Rhodey at one point and climbs into the car he refers to as his _incognito Audi_. Just nice enough to own, but not so nice that it’ll draw any more attention to him than it would any random rich white man in Midtown. He’ll probably get more clout from being a man picking up a kid from school than anything else, as unfortunate as that is. 

He taps on the wheel when he’s parked on the side of the street. His fingernails are loud against the wood. He’s got some Fleetwood Mac playing from the radio, Stevie Nicks’s voice an ethereal sort of soul-softener for him. His ragged edges feel momentarily hemmed. 

He hopes the kid is happy to see him. 

The clock hits half past two and he gets out of the car, closes the door, leans against it. The wind is cool still, and he pulls the fold of his cap lower over his ears. 

The kids start streaming out, then, in a great, stampeding herd, shouting and laughing and shoving their way towards the school buses and their parked cars. Elbows fly, they squint and look up into the sky, wary of the sunshine. Tony figures Peter will be at the back of the crowd, trying to avoid the noise. 

He’s right, really. Peter and Ned are the last two out, half a minute after the crowd is gone. Ned seems to be telling a story, waving his hands around with wide, intense eyes. He leans closer to Peter as he speaks and Peter lilts forward with a laugh, grabbing a handful of Ned’s backpack to keep himself upright, their foreheads touching. Ned laughs when Peter does, waving wildly as if trying to shush the both of them so he can finish the joke. 

Tony can’t help but grin just a little bit while watching them. 

Peter catches his eye as the two of them recover from whatever Ned was telling, straightening a little and waving. The grin that pulls his lips is nearly blinding. Tony feels his own widen in response. 

Peter pats Ned firmly on the shoulder and gives him a little shake before peeling off and hurrying towards Tony. He throws both arms straight up and waves.

Tony mimics the movement enthusiastically, without the slightest inclination to feel stupid. That’s just the way the kid is. 

“Yoohoo!” calls the kid. “Toooony!”

“Hey, kiddo,” Tony shouts back. “Good day?”

Peter pauses at the lip of the far sidewalk and looks both ways. Traffic is clear. Tony can see his devious smirk from that far away. 

Peter slips forward into an easy run of cartwheels, backpack bouncing against his spine and slipping towards his head, boyish and buoyant and elated. He lands certainly on his sneakers, bounces once more out of excitement rather than a struggle for balance. He continues his jog the rest of the way across the street and then comes beside Tony, crossing his arms over his chest and leaning against the car door to mimic the man. 

“Good day,” Peter agrees. “You?”

Tony can feel his grin go mushy and fond. He doesn’t bother to hide it from Peter, whose eyes go warm in turn. “Good. Better, now.”

Peter nudges his shoulder into Tony’s. “Yeah. Me too.”

“So,” Tony says. “Dunkin?”

“Oh, _hell_ _yes!”_

+I.

The thing about history is that they’re living it. Everyone is living it, every moment of every day, which is strange and weird to think. They’re the stuff of textbooks and novels, the stuff their grandkids will read about but never quite grasp, distant and golden-tinged and ephemeral. 

It’s just that—Peter is learning about Tony in his history class. And that’s really frickin weird. 

The especially weird part is that his teacher seems to be hell-bent on only talking about the problematic parts of Tony’s past. There hasn’t been a single mention of arc reactor tech being evolved for clean energy, or of the dozens of fundraising events, galas, movie showings, and speeches Tony puts on every year. Peter knows they exist—he’s been to a few. They’re kinda stuffy and boring but, hey, it’s a Stark gala and he’s a teenager. If he’s sneaky and puffs out his chest cockily enough, he sometimes manages to slip a glass of champagne. 

They talk about grief, instead, and how it twists the mind of man. How it makes them power-hungry, brutal, and these are clumsy, sharp words Peter would never dream of attaching to Tony as he knows him. Not in a million years, not to the man who comes to his and May’s for dinner once a week and showed him the Indiana Jones movies for the first time; the man he’s watched kiss Rhodey and Pepper on the cheek with equal gusto; the man who Peter swears cried real human tears when he heard they were thinking about putting an Iron Man balloon in the Macy’s Thanksgiving parade. 

They talk about wasted years and how they could have been used for good if only Tony hadn’t been selfish. Peter struggles to consolidate this with the man who brings him a snack when he picks him up from school; the man who decorated Peter a bedroom in both the tower and the Compound, equally badass and different and wonderful in their own rights; the man who offers May a steady, regular-houred job every time he sees her and never gives up, no matter how many times she says no and whacks him upside the head. 

Peter can hardly eat his goopy mac and cheese when lunch comes, frowns his way through wood shop and physics. 

Dark times. Tony always seems to be going through dark times in some way or another. He never catches a break. 

And yet here he is, so kind and good to Peter, to May, to Pepper, Rhodey, and Happy. His friends, his family, always turning on him in waves, and yet. And yet. 

Peter feels suddenly desperate to give something back to the man who has done so much for so many and yet never gets recognition or appreciation for it. 

He taps his eraser on his desk while he thinks. 

He bites his lip, slips his phone from his pocket, and googles _how to cause a red endothermic reaction._

———

“Pete,” Tony says in surprise, sitting up straighter at the dining table. “Didn’t think you were due today.”

“Nah,” Peter says. He pulls out the chair across from Tony and sits heavily in it. “Just thought I’d drop by.”

“Cool,” Tony says, smiling. His eyes crinkle with squint lines when he smiles. Peter would like to add to them, every smile he spurs digging the lines a little deeper. The echoes of past happiness carved right there for the world to see. 

“Well,” Peter says. “Well. Okay. It’s also that I, uh, I kinda have something for you.”

“It’s not my birthday,” Tony says, but it’s almost a question. 

“No,” Peter says, “no—it’s, uh, not a birthday gift. It’s a just because I want to gift.”

Tony seems to short circuit for a moment. “No, that’s backwards. You don’t get stuff for me, that is my job and I thought my position was rather secure, with room for growth and possibly a future managerial upgrade—“

“To-ny,” Peter sing-songs. 

Tony scoots down in his seat. “Alright. Continue, at risk of my death on your hands from sudden cardiac rupture.”

Peter rolls his eyes, then shakes his hands out to chase the trembling from his fingertips. 

He picks up the bag from the floor by his feet. He watches Tony trace it with his eyes, over the fluffed tissue paper and the wrinkled edges of the thick plastic. “Sorry,” he says quickly, “it got a little squished on the—on the F train.”

“You could’ve just asked me to come and pick you up,” Tony says. 

“I wanted to surprise you.”

Tony sits quietly for a moment. His arms lift and he makes grabby hands. Peter reaches over the table and deposits the bag in his lap, watching the gleam of afternoon sunlight from the windows catch on Tony’s engagement ring. 

Tony bounces the bag on his thighs. “Hefty. Should I shake it? I always see people shaking their gifts in commercials and I’m just puzzled because what the hell could they possibly discover about a gift by shaking it?” 

Peter, a serial present-shaker, sniffs. “Shoes sound different than books, or clothes.”

“Or Legos, I’m sure,” says Tony. 

“Or Legos,” Peter agrees. 

“Alright. I can see the anxiety positively festering behind your eyes. I’ll hurry up.”

Tony pulls out the tissue paper delicately, as if he plans to flatten out and save each piece. As if he hasn’t had much opportunity to open gifts like this. Stuff he can pick up and hold in his hands rather than things in an envelope, things denoted with a deposit slip or an email or a few dry words. Things that don’t further ferment the longer Tony ignores them. 

Tony pulls the mason jar out gently by the lid. He tilts it so it catches the dying bits of sun, glitter floating sharp on the water inside. Refracted bits of light catch on the walls around them, on their skin, their shirts. 

“It’s a, well. It glows in the dark,” Peter says.

Tony looks up at him with a strange expression on his face. “FRI, blackout the room, would you?” 

The windows come over with a dark tint. The jar glows with swirls of red, the golden glitter sparkling with it, the blue glitter taking on a purplish tinge. Tony tilts it, watching, entranced. 

“It’s so that you remember,” Peter says, “even when things around you are—are dark, I’m here to help you find the light.” 

Tony’s gaze snaps up to meet Peter’s. Even in the reddish glow, Peter can see his eyes are wet. 

“It’s, it’s kind of stupid,” Peter rubs a hand on the back of his neck, “but I was just thinking a lot, today, and well. Yeah. I wanted to remind you, I guess.”

“It’s awesome, Peter,” Tony says. He clears his throat. “Thank you, really. It’s so cool. I’m going to put it on my nightstand and Pepper, she can just, she can just deal with it. I’m going to take artsy pictures of it and put it on Pinterest, I’m going to need you to make a small battalion of these so I can put one on every flat surface in the house—why are you laughing at me?”

Peter swipes a finger under his eye, catching the moisture there. “Just glad you like it, is all. Never thought that a glow jar would be all it takes to impress a stylish and expensive public figure such as yourself.”

Tony sniffles then. “I’m a simple man with simple taste.”

Peter laughs, loud, his head falling backward and a hand coming down sharp on the tabletop. 

Peter feels Tony’s gaze lingering on him and glances up to meet it. 

“You’re a really good kid, Peter,” Tony says quietly. It feels holy, a thin layer of glass coating them, if they move too sharply it’ll shatter. “I know I—don't tell you that as much as I probably should, but you’re a great kid. The best kid, in the whole world, probably.”

Peter is fairly certain Tony has just shouldered the glass entirely off of them and let it hit the ground, fracturing into a billion shards, still glimmering like the stupid metaphor jar Tony has yet to put down. “Cool,” Peter squawks, “because you’re, you’re the best in the world too. The best human, probably.” He buries his face in his hands and scrubs his fingers into his eyes. “Why am I incapable of—okay. You just—you mean a lot to me. Tony. Not Iron Man, even though he’s pretty—you know—he’s cool. You, because you’re really just—you’re always here for me. You make time for me, which is something not many people can do, and time is, well. Time,” Peter drops his hands, shaking one listlessly, “slips, easily. Thank you for not, uh, making me feel like I’m a waste of yours. Time, that is. I’m illiterate, leave me to die.”

Tony is smiling, small and delicate and gentle, the type of warm, creased smile Peter would never have pinned him for before having met him. Peter wants to be the cause of that smile all the time. He wants to take a trowel and dig himself a hole in the soft parts of Tony’s chest, burrow there, make himself a home. Grow there beside Tony’s heart, listening to it thump, tapping his toes along to its steady tattoo. “I—uh,” Tony says eloquently. He shakes his head, and keeps shaking it as he speaks, as if he’s puzzled, but his eyes are so sure, “I love you, Pete. And I know I don’t say it, _ever_ , really, but I, I do. And I hope you know that.”

Peter rests his chin on a fist. “I, yeah, I do. And you know I love you too. You’re, like, my best friend. Right up there with May. That’s. Well. Special standing.”

Tony pushes his chair back slowly. “I’m—I’m gonna hug you now. And you’re probably gonna be uncomfortable because I am not exactly a seasoned hugger other than, like, with Rhodey, so you’re just gonna—“

Tony is quite wrong, Peter thinks. His hugs are supreme. He already can’t wait for the next one. 

**Author's Note:**

> !!! hi i’m back on my peter bullshit
> 
> please o cheese leave me some comments letting me know what you think — i need that serotonin rn because life is booty but you all are prime 
> 
> big hugs and kisses from me <3 
> 
> tumblr - floweryfran


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